Recently, using clips from newspapers found in the British Newspaper Archive, I told some of the story of Eliza Edwards, who died, most probably of TB exacerbated by excessive drinking, in a common brothel in 1833 and whose body ended up via St Margaret’s workhouse, on the dissecting slab at Guy’s Hospital – none of her friends nor her purported sister could afford to claim her corpse for burial and recent legislation to combat grave digging allowed cadavers abandoned in the poorhouse to be used for medical education.
Edwards had once been known as Miss Lavinia Walstein, an esteemed actress who took the female lead in all the greats of the classic repertoire – Rome & Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear, She Stoops to Conquer to name a few – in theatres in the major cities of Britain: Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool and London. The earliest listing I have found for her is 1800. Perhaps she was 15 or 16 then, which would mean she was in her mid 40s when she died.
I bought this engraving of Miss Walstein on Amazon. She is about thirty, by my estimation, and looks very fine, with beautifully curled and crimped hair, a strong neck and good arms. Yes, there is something masculine around her jaw and brow, but the world can be forgiven for accepting her as female. I wonder if the original artist, Moses Haughton, knew that she was not all that she seemed?
No one can know, of course, but I am pretty sure that Houghton’s depiction, is fairly accurate. There is another portrait of Miss Walstein in the V&A collection: http://collections.vam.ac.uk where she looks much more feminine and idealised. Her features have been softened and are more ‘sloping’. The neck is thick and strong but it is smooth, but not as muscly as here.
After Miss Walstein’s death, her heavily pregnant ‘sister’ fainted in the inquest when she was challenged over whether she knew Eliza was a man. Almost the whole world, it seemed, had been taken in. With the possible exception of Houghton.
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